Chapter 735 — The Dragon's Shadow in Winter

Mei Heng departed.

The light-bending field veiled the dragon's colossal frame. A sudden, sourceless gale swept across the sky above Xuanyao City, and faint ripples of distortion flickered for an instant against the backdrop of cloud and daylight—but apart from a handful of powerful individuals and the watchtowers built specifically to detect magically cloaked units, no one knew that a dragon had visited the city of Xuanque.

Gao Yang stood before the gates of the Institute of Magical Technology, gazing up at the direction in which Mei Heng had vanished, and only after a long while did he lower his eyes.

The Tide-Reversal Empire... the Ultimate Book... knowledge stolen from the satellite swarm...

He savored these newly gathered pieces of intelligence, sketching in his mind the outline of the gods and the history of ancient times. After a long stretch of pondering, he smiled and shook his head, then turned to look back at the Institute of Magical Technology behind him.

Hundreds upon hundreds of researchers bustled within this facility; a dozen laboratories and project teams of varying sizes operated inside it. In the mindscape, the Origin Laboratory ran hundreds of simulated experiments each day; in the workshops of the Mechanical Manufactory, gears and levers clashed day and night without pause. In Holy Suniel, in Mingyuan City, in the Mages' Association and the Scholars' Association, countless people full of wisdom and learning were gathering, drawing back together the profound knowledge scattered across human society, redrawing the fragmented technology of the ancients...

All of this was driven forward by tens of thousands of people together, by Cecil society as a whole—born of the people, for the people. Not heaven-sent technology dug from the ruins of aliens, not blueprints conjured from thin air by any one person on the territory, not miracles, not gifts.

……

The dragon flew across the vast, clear winter sky. The light-bending field gradually dispersed; clouds and sunlight interwove, casting dappled shadows across the azure scales. The vistas of wilderness and hills were mirrored in her crystal-like eyes. The king of the skies circled twice in the air, then lowered her head and plunged toward the earth like a meteor.

After a hair-raising glide and deceleration, the blue dragon slammed into a century-old giant tree, snapping the hundred-meter-tall colossus clean in half. Her unbalanced body then hurtled forward through a series of earth-shaking impacts and tumbles, thunderous booms ringing out ceaselessly as countless giant trees and solid boulders shattered into pieces. The earth was plowed into a deep furrow nearly half a kilometer long.

The blue dragon finally came to rest at the foot of a cliff. After half a minute of gasping, she laboriously raised her head; earth, stone, branches, and leaves clattered from her body. From several terrible wounds flowed blood that was scalding hot and faintly luminous.

Throughout the dragon's body, implants and modified glands immediately sprang to work, setting about repairing this powerful, resilient frame. Mei Heng lifted her head; the scales around her neck opened like some kind of heat-dissipation apparatus, revealing beneath them a metallic lining and glowing conduits and ports. Jets of superheated steam erupted from the seams of these implants, drawing an involuntary low grunt from the blue dragon.

"Damn it... I really don't like boosters... but the auxiliary heart I've got in me right now is a limited edition..."

Mei Heng muttered, her voice rumbling, but she nevertheless produced from somewhere a massive gun-shaped injector. Gripping it with her foreclaws, she drove its front end deep into the gap between the scales below her neck. With a hiss of pressure release, a liter of potent composite booster and an equal quantity of regenerative agent were injected into her bloodstream, and her two auxiliary hearts—already on the verge of rupturing—finally eased.

The three additional hearts and the subdermal bionic pumps could vastly enhance the endurance and survivability of dragons who needed to travel far, but no matter how you put it, discussing the Black Pit with a foreigner and dropping oblique hints about the forbidden knowledge of the gods... it was still too stimulating.

Mei Heng breathed in great gulps, settling the side effects of the booster overdose—though some dragons actually enjoyed the sensation, and some even suffered from booster addiction, she simply couldn't adapt to it.

Once she felt somewhat better, she closed the scales around her neck and hid those implants away again.

In the dragon society of Tarlond, implants and boosters had long been part of dragon life. Even newly hatched dragons underwent their first implant surgery within the first decade of their lives, embedding a resonance core into the skull. This resonance core would establish a connection between its user and "Omega," enabling the young dragon to converse with that mighty artificial intelligence, which would in turn complete the young dragon's knowledge education and behavioral guidance. So it could be said that any normal Tarlond dragon citizen had implants inside their body, one hundred percent.

Some dragons simply chose to leave their implants exposed, such as Council Speaker An Qian; others preferred concealed modifications, such as Mei Heng Pernia.

After resting for several more minutes, Mei Heng finally stood up. The bleeding wounds on her body had already healed in emergency fashion, and taking flight was no longer a problem. Though she would have liked to rest a while longer, she knew her colleagues monitoring the situation from the rear had probably descended into chaos by now.

The blue dragon soared into the air and soon reached an altitude where she could communicate directly with Tarlond.

Communication with Tarlond was possible from the surface as well, but at that altitude all transmissions would be heard by the Dragon God. Only here, near the end of the sky, near the legacy of the "Voyager," would communications escape the eavesdropping of any god.

Even if the person on the other end of the line stood on the ground, stood right at the gates of a god's palace, it made no difference. A million years had passed, and the lingering might of the Voyager remained.

A pale golden communication interface materialized before Mei Heng. Maintaining her flight altitude, she called toward the distant headquarters of the Mithril Vault: "Mei Heng Pernia calling the support team, Mei Heng Pernia calling the support team... pick up already! I'm up here in the stratosphere dialing you with grade-ten disabilities, you hear me?!"

At last a somewhat tense and flustered voice came through the interface: "Mei Heng! This is Noretta—what's your situation? Your implants suddenly reported that two of your four hearts burst! And you injected yourself with triple the dose of booster!"

Mei Heng drew a deep breath: "Phew... they didn't burst. I saved them with regenerative agent, but the sensors are probably broken... it's fine, I can feel them still beating."

Hearing Mei Heng's still-spirited voice, Noretta, far away in Tarlond, finally breathed a sigh of relief. Relaxed now, she even felt like cracking a joke: "How'd you get so badly wrecked? Did the client finally catch you embezzling their complimentary gifts? Which legendary powerhouse pinned you down and beat you up?"

"I had a chat with Gao Yang Cecil about the Black Pit, and about the Tide-Reversal Empire," Mei Heng said flatly. "I let a few extra words slip."

As expected, she heard through the channel a clatter of objects hitting the floor and several gasps.

This chaos, brought about by herself, made the corner of Mei Heng's mouth curl upward despite herself.

A friend's voice cried out from the pale golden interface: "Mei Heng! Are you insane!! Do you have a death wish?!"

"I'm still alive, aren't I?"